Canada's Steven Dubois wins short track Olympic silver medal

Olympic rookie Steven Dubois, the unlikeliest medal threat of Canada's speed skating trio in the men's 1,500 metres, won a silver medal in a penalty-filled short track competition on Wednesday night in Beijing.

Dubois crossed the finish line in two minutes 9.254 seconds to earn Canada's second silver of these Winter Games and eighth medal overall.

South Korea's Hwan Dae-Heon posted a winning time of 2:09.219 while Semen Elistratov of Russian Olympic Committee (2:09.267) collected bronze at Capital Indoor Stadium.

The 15th-ranked Dubois arrived at the Olympics coming off his first individual medal of the season with a silver performance in the 500 to wrap up the World Cup season in Dordrecht, Netherlands.

A substitute with the 2018 Olympic team in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the 24-year-old was fourth in the 1,500 at the 2019 world championships in Sofia, Bulgaria and the following year picked up silver in a triple-medal effort at the Four Continents Championships in Montreal.

In Wednesday's final, Dubois started conservatively in the back of the 10-man field, moved to sixth with nine of the 13 ½ laps remaining and jumped to second with eight laps remaining. In a frenetic final lap, the Canadian held off Elistratov at the line in a photo finish.

Dubois teammates, Pascal Dion and Charles Hamelin, who won 2014 Olympic gold in the distance, exited earlier in Wednesday's event.